


I am a reflection in the faces of everyone I have ever known, and what is Death but just another mirror?

by dolos_0



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Jack Manifold Needs A Hug, Jack Manifold-centric, No beta we die like Jack, Villain Jack Manifold, im quite tired so i hope this is good enough, jack manifold is very much an interesting character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 13:48:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30005853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dolos_0/pseuds/dolos_0
Summary: selfish/ˈsɛlfɪʃ/adjective(of a person, action, or motive) lacking consideration for other people; concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 46





	I am a reflection in the faces of everyone I have ever known, and what is Death but just another mirror?

Tommy, Jack thinks, is one of the most selfish people he’s ever met. 

In the good old days, when they were shaded from the sun by Eret’s walls and Wilbur’s music and Tubbo’s laughter, he used to look at Tommy and envy him.

Every fibre of the blonde’s body seemed to scream ‘mine’. My country, my discs. My family. Jack had always admired him for that. His fierce declaration of possession was like a shout, like a dare, to the rest of the world, one that said ‘if you look at me, if you touch me or mine, I’ll kill you.’

Of course, Tommy ends up being the one dying. Twice, actually. The first time, in the control room, he thinks what Tommy must have felt, watching the things he loves being taken from him, no matter how much he wants them. In the back of his mind, in the little bit of him that he does not indulge, not yet, hopes Tommy died last. 

The second time Tommy died, Jack Manifold can only smile. Tommyinnit, who lost the duel for L’Manberg, who had to choose one of his prized possessions over the other. It’s ironic. The discs, or L’Manberg? Which is more important, two bits of vinyl or the country? Jack is glad when he finds out it’s the country. 

(“The discs, Tubbo, the discs were worth more than you ever were!”)

And when Tommy loses L’Manberg, first to Schlatt and then Wilbur, Jack laughs. It’s glorious, he thinks, to watch the kid who was always so material, who seemed to love his things more than people, lose the things and the people, as a bonus. He starts his own country, and has never felt happier.

Tommy is exiled. He is happy, because it’s the boy’s own fault.

He loses Manifold Land, and is a bit pissed.

He’s very pissed, when Tommy kills him, shoots him with a bow and sends him plummeting to his death. He only wanted to give Tommy a gift, give something to the one who had everything and now has nothing?

His villain arc, he calls it, and finally gives in to the voice in his head.

During the Doomsday War, he is too busy fighting for his life to worry about what Tommy’s doing. At some point, he looks up, from where he’s standing, back to back with Niki, and sees Philza and Technoblade. With his blonde hair blowing in the wind and his wings tucked behind him, Phil looks exactly like Tommy, and in that split second, with the ruins of Old L’Manberg around him, it occurs to him that the rest of Tommy’s family, the brother he had and the one he didn’t and the father that nobody knows, have taken everything from Tommy, and by extension all of them. 

Wilbur and Techno have stolen L’Manberg, half each (or does a third of it belong to Dream, who would take so much more from Tommy, always with a bang?). Philza has stolen Wilbur. And Tommy is the only one left, clinging to Tubbo in the ruins of what once was a haven for all of them, and is now a smoking crater populated by nothing but memories, ones that are not his alone!

It is then that Jack realises a crucial truth. Tommy, in being so fucking selfish, had taken everything, from all of them. 

When he dies, hours after the battle ends, he is furious. The gaping hole in his gut, one that Niki had tried to staunch with her bare hands, had finally stopped bleeding, if only because his heartbeat had grown so sluggish. He stumbles down the Prime Path, trying to get somewhere, anywhere, and he drops so suddenly that he almost throws up.

He doesn’t throw up, because all of a sudden he isn’t alive. He’s falling, faster and faster, like an angel with its wings clipped, but he was never the angel, was he? He was the man in the background, the punchline, Jack Manifold. He lands, with a heavy thump, on absolutely nothing, and his hands are see through when he tries to adjust his headset.

He gets back, because of course he does. He has to. He has things to do. So slowly, every so slowly, he pulls himself back up to the land of the living. No supporting cast, no prompter, just him, alone in the spotlight.

The thing is, when Jack dies, he dies with gritted teeth. All the way, as he crawls back, towards retribution and punishment and through the light, his teeth are gritted. It begins to hurt, and the pain is his, it belongs to him in a way that Tommy and the discs could never. It is a pain that has rooted itself into his skull. It sends bursts of light shearing through his skull. It, quite literally, is radioactive, it strips the hair from his head and leaves him feeling sick. He continues anyway.

There are two types of selfishness, Jack thinks as he lays on the soft grass and breathes deeply.

There is the type that he thought Tommy had, the one that stands in front of the world alone and stakes a claim, one that cannot be defied or broken or disputed, one that says ‘mine’ in the loudest possible voice. It is selfishness for the good of others; it is what compelled Tommy to stand up in front of them all and declare that they would fight for L’Manberg. It is the selfishness that Wilbur hummed with, that he held high like a torch that illuminated L’Manberg for the short time he had it. It is the kind that stands by you, that inspires you to move on. It is mutual.

And then there is the brand of selfishness that Tommy has practised for a long time, the one that made him start wars over the discs, the one that made him challenge Dream to the duel that he lost, that would have cost them L’Manberg had Tommy not done the sensible thing, for once in his life, and given up the discs.

Jack thinks it is his turn to be selfish, and so he gets up and walks towards L’Manberg, or where it could have been, had people been good, and given things up.

**Author's Note:**

> very tired. have this.
> 
> edit: the weather is nice today. would you like to go for a walk? https://discord.gg/syeKx9aK


End file.
